A man accused of stabbing a relative during Sunday school believed the victim may have put a curse on him, the sheriff says.

The suspect’s family says he is schizophrenic, and was off his medicine.

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Billy Lewis, 65, is being held without bond at the Sumter-Lee Regional Detention Center.

Deputies said Lewis attacked a man who is his cousin by marriage. He stabbed the man in the back of his head, back and shoulder with a 6-inch knife, investigators say. He attacked the man Sunday morning at St. Paul AME Shaw Church in Sumter during Sunday school.

"He didn’t take his medicine and I think that was the cause of all of this," Lewis’ sister said. "When he don’t take his medicine, he gets nervous and be feeling sick but he really is a good person. He’ll do anything he can do for you. He helped me."

Lewis told deputies he attacked the man because he believed the victim had “put a root on him.”

"If you live in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, you see some of this," Sumter County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Ken Bell said. "You see people with chicken bones and the blue bottles in the trees warding off the hanks and the ghosts and things. This is really a custom that is starting to spread more up this way, and I was kind of surprised to hear it. Basically, it means he thought that the victim put a curse on him."

A "hank," which is likely a colloquial modification of the word "haunt," is a reference to haunting spirits.

Deputies said they had taken Lewis to a mental institution over the past couple weeks, but they did not say why.